Blessed by the Potato

The drive to Ottawa was relatively smooth. There were, of course, a few construction slow downs, and a couple of insane drivers (one guy was zooming around lanes and passed me on the shoulder — I almost called 911 on him). The residence room here is pretty sweet. For less than the conference rate at the hotel, we’ve got two separate bedrooms, air conditioning, two desks, and a fridge and microwave. I knew it had a kitchenette, but I thought that would be fridge and stove, so I brought pots in pans so we could save more money and cook here… oops. Anyway, the full-sized fridge and freezer will let us stock up on drinks and soup and doggie bags from restaurants. We’ve got the dial-up working (as you can see by my access), but I forgot to bring a network cable to give the in-room high speed a try (it’s wired up, but they told me on the phone it wasn’t working).

There are really only two downsides to the place. The biggest is that the windows face east (right into the rising sun in the morning), and have crappy panel blinds, and both rooms have at least two panels missing, so it’s really bright when the sun comes up. If we’re gonna be here a week, I’m thinking some masking tape and tinfoil might be in order… :) The other minor thing is that the only light in the rooms are two lamps, and they took the light bulbs out of the desk lamps!

The conference doesn’t start until Monday, but I’ve got a full load of work to do here to prepare my presentations today. Hopefully we’ll get to do some touristy things afterwards.

The 12-volt outlet (cigarette lighter) in my car has been broken ever since my brother had the stereo system installed, possibly since before it came into our family. It’s never really bothered me. While I am a little anal about monitoring the air pressure in my tires, and always carry an air compressor in the trunk, I’ve managed to keep my tires inflated through the use of other people’s 12-volt power or the free air pumps at service stations.

I don’t know how long this has been going on, but I stopped at two different Esso stations in the past week, and both had started charging 50 cents to use their air compressors. Outrageous! For now, Petro-Canada, Shell, Sunoco, and Loblaws/Supercentre gas stations still have free air compressors (though the new Shell at Hwy 7 and Woodbine hides theirs around back halfway along the car wash lane). Considering how relatively cheap an air compressor is, how long they last, and how important properly inflated tires can be for safety, I’m really surprised at that move. Providing free air is just a cost of doing business for a gas station, and not a very big one, either. While I don’t run a gas station myself, an educated guess would suggest keeping the windshield cleaning stations topped up with cleanser, paper towels, and squeegees would cost more over time than the air compressor. I find this especially disturbing and surprising since they jumped straight to a 50 cent charge, instead of starting at just a quarter, and since they jumped into the mess all on their own.

Well, looks like I won’t be buying gas from Esso any more… which is a good point that Wayfare made: how much can they possibly be making, 50 cents at a time, from the few people who actually check their tire pressures regularly? Does that at all compare to the amount of goodwill they stand to lose from cheapskates like me?

“Anything that doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” As a Paladin, pretty much nothing kills you, so…

On a more serious note, playing a Paladin in WoW (even though I haven’t touched the game in almost two years) gave me the incredible ability to read a book 30 seconds at a time. (Seal, autoattack, read; look up, repeat). That ability is quite useful at the moment as I’m doing image analysis. Set up brain. Select fiducials, let computer chug for 30-60 s. Look up, pick next option, repeat.

The budget woes of Canada’s largest city have been in the news a lot lately, culminating in Mayor Miller’s defeat in council to increase revenues. Since I don’t really live in Toronto any more, I haven’t been paying too much attention to the whole situation, and have some mixed feelings on the whole idea. On the one hand, Toronto needs money, and some of the ideas were pretty good ones, in particular the vehicle registration surcharges. Property taxes are one of the only other routes open, but at this point I think (even as a non-property owner) that they’re starting to get excessive — high property taxes encourage sprawl, which is already pretty far out of hand. A casino is neither here nor there for me — but I think with casinos in Orillia and Niagara and slots in many closer locations, Toronto’s gambling needs are pretty well serviced; on the other hand, Montreal, Ottawa, and Halifax seem to live with their casinos without turning into hotbeds of sin. I’m particularly pissed that the other levels of government haven’t been able to help Toronto out, particularly the Federal government which has found billions of dollars for almost everything else under the sun (perhaps if Toronto elected a separatist party, we’d get appeasement money too).

After city council voted to delay any funding increases until after the results of the provincial election in the fall, they had to start looking for ways to cut. The CBC has an article on the planned TTC cuts that made me do a double take:

Cancelling about 20 low-ridership bus routes, including the Dupont, Pharmacy and Calvington lines, as soon as October.

Abandoning plans to put 100 new buses into service this fall, instead using them to replace old vehicles.

Closing the Sheppard subway line at the beginning of 2008.

Cancelling all planned service improvements.

Hiking fares by 10 to 25 cents.

In the immortal words of Kyle’s mom: What-what-WHAAAT??!! They’re going to close the brand-new Sheppard subway line? I haven’t ridden that line yet, even for novelty’s sake, but I imagine the ridership is low (especially if they’re planning on closing it). But realistically, how much can it cost to run a line that’s already built, compared with the busses they’d need? Electricity is cheap (especially compared to gas prices lately), a train only needs two employees (and it would take more than two busses to replace a train, unless they’re really empty), and maintenance/wear-and-tear on an electric train is way lower than a bus. Plus since installing the line, the condo developers have set up shop all along Sheppard. In just a year or two there’s going to be a metric shit-tonne of people trying to commute along that corridor. I just can’t see the sense in closing it (especially after the billion dollars needed to build it has already been sunk).

And more fare hikes? It’s already gone up over 75 cents in less than 10 years.

$130 million is what the TTC is looking to cut, according the the article. Pennies compared to the billions in extra spending the “conservative” government brought in (and a sad farewell to the concept of paying down our debt). One thought: if I were in charge of a major political party, perhaps one with millions of dollars at its disposal to launch unending attack ads outside of any election call, I’d consider (though the legalities may be tricky) just throwing that ad money at public transit to build goodwill and make much better use of the resources. How many voters are actually swayed by ads anyway?

So, here’s what I consider to be a very good question: should transit be a municipal issue? All our levels of government are interested in pissing down the chain lately: provincial and federal levels passing responsibilities down to municipalities; municipalities running out of money, cutting programs, and telling people to deal with issues themselves. But perhaps with transit, we should buck it up to a provincial or federal responsibility. That might also make transit more equal between cities: Toronto, for instance, has pretty darned good transit with the TTC. The 905, by and large, has decent transit options for getting to Toronto, but not getting around their own municipalities. London has a decent bus system, especially for a city of its size, but lacks some amenities such as late night busses (in Toronto you can take the subway home from a bar if you leave just a little bit before closing, and the vomit comet after that; London shuts down bus service to Richmond Row at midnight). A province-wide transit authority (with a lot more money) would be able to give every reasonably-sized municipality decent bus service, and would be able to integrate the services between cities: perhaps making it possible to take a bus from Sheppard to John St. along Yonge without having to pay two fares; also synchronizing the schedules between different services.

I’m drafting letters to my MP & MPP while the image analysis computer here chugs away (as useless as I know that will be, what with the provincial government in hibernation until the election, and the federal government under the thrall of the insane fuck-wads conservatives, while my MPP is Liberal; as is my parents’). I’ll post them soonish.

Update: Of course, Wayfare is probably right “They won’t close the subway, it’s just a political move.” Political grandstanding of this sort is quite common, and the TTC probably wouldn’t close the Sheppard line just as it gets into the design stage for the Spadina subway extension…

I’m here late in the lab doing some data analysis to get ready for my presentations in Ottawa next week. It’s been pretty crazy, two 14-hour nights back to back now, leaving long after the sun has come up. And I’m still only a little more than halfway done, with just one day left to go.

During all these all nighters, I like to snack. And since everything is closed, I have to plan my snacks ahead a bit, and tend to go on the “safe” side and bring extra junk, which is of course not good for the diet. The last two nights I’ve brought some sugar-free gum to keep my mouth busy without ruining my diet or my teeth (good, especially since I just found out I cracked another tooth and am in line for porcelain crown #3). I usually avoid gum because it does stick a bit to my extensive dental work, and also because I usually have a strong desire to swallow it. Fortunately, that is not nearly as strong for mint gum (when I do chew gum, it tends to be yummy — not mint). I had two regular sized (12 packs?) last night of whatever free samples came in the mail yesterday afternoon (Trident? Dentyne?), and a whopping 60 pack of Excel that I picked up at the store tonight. After all this gum, I can share with you several observations. The first is that Excel does stay flavourful a lot longer than the Trident (Dentyne?), but that the excel gets so tough and unpleasant to chew before the flavour is gone that I spit it out not much after I would have spat out the Trident anyway. The second is that those new-fangled push-through pill-type packs for gum have essentially eliminated the gum wrapper, giving me no natural way to wrap up my discarded chew. Thirdly, my breath is very minty.

I need birthday present ideas for my mom. Please leave any ideas you may have for me in the comments section (or email them to me).

So with the trip to Ottawa and the cottage coming up, we thought it was best to secure some online access with a dial-up account. It was a surprisingly difficult ordeal. Many websites for ISPs would forward us around due to acquisitions and mergers before we found what the new ISP name was, and then many of them made it difficult to find the access numbers needed for all the cities we would (or might) visit. Oddly enough, many also made it difficult to actually order an account.

Take Bell Sympatico for instance. We tried calling them first because we knew that they had access all across the country. We even have most of the access numbers already since my dad uses Sympatico at the cottage (I was tempted to just use my dad’s account and hope that they wouldn’t notice the simultaneous connection). But it took a lot of navigating around their website before we finally found which number to call. Wayfare called to order, and after 20 minutes was pulling her hair out and swearing never to use Bell again for anything.

First, she tried the online chat feature (which sounds like a good idea — the internet support people should know about the internet services). That… didn’t go so well, and she was directed to call the number (310-SURF). She had to go through the frustrating automated menu, then was transferred around 3 times until she finally got a representative who told her that the line was only for high-speed DSL subscriptions and would have to transfer her for dial-up [I may get some of the details wrong here, she’s got them all somewhere and may correct me in the comments]. That transfer lead to her being on hold for something like 5 minutes [after something like 20 minutes had already elapsed], then she was told to call a different number (310-SURF) where she could find someone who could help her. Now, that’s just criminal: a customer should never have to call back to a company to get help, especially when all they’re trying to do is something completely ordinary: order a service and give the company money. And a customer should never, ever have to call the same number back. She pointed this out, and the rep told her that she would have to call back, and then told her which specific menu options to pick to get someone. He turned out to be completely, flabbergastingly wrong. So, going through another chain of reps and hold periods, including being transferred to India (possibly Pakistan, definitely a weak international connection either way), she got someone who was going to try to sell her some dial-up internet access. She was asked for the number she would connect from. She explained that she wanted roaming access while we were on vacation, that we’d be connecting from all over Ontario (and possibly Quebec)… and the rep told her that wasn’t possible. Now, that’s just plain wrong. I know it’s wrong, since the whole purpose of my dad having a Sympatico account is because we can use it while roaming, with access numbers everywhere. So all in all, an hour of Wayfare’s time wasted (more in fact, since the service was so bad she’s going to have to write them a letter to complain).

So we tried really hard to go with Bell, to give them our money and stick with the familiar, but they wanted no part of it. Back to surfing the internet for recommendations for other ISPs. We found a few really cheap ones local to Ottawa and the cottage area, and considered getting one account for each place if we couldn’t find an ISP with access to both. Eventually, I found out that Teksavvy has a dial-up plan (in addition to their DSL service) at a pretty reasonable rate, with access in Barrie, Ottawa, and pretty much anywhere in Quebec we might care to go. Whether or not Barrie was a local call to the cottage was still up in the air, but Teksavvy has such an excellent reputation that I figured we’d go with them for Ottawa/Quebec access at least, and possibly figure out the cottage later [though it turns out Barrie is local]. The toll free number to call was in pretty small print, so I wasn’t hugely impressed by that (what happened to the giant “order now! Call:” banners that used to plague ISP websites?), but the guy who answered the phone was great. He:

Of course, these shouldn’t necessarily be shining examples of outstanding customer service, but simply par for the course. The fact that it’s not is just simply a shame upon the other call centres. Anyhow, now I think Teksavvy will be our ISP for every summer where we need roaming dial-up access.

One thing I’m surprised I haven’t seen is advertisements for short-term contract dial-up access for vacationers. I believe I saw one once, nearly 10 years ago, for one of the PEI ISPs…

Other than dial-up, we did briefly look into the possibility of the high-speed wireless modems from Rogers and Bell. However, we weren’t sure of how well they’d perform (cell coverage at the cottage can be spotty), and how cost effective they’d be (Rogers only mentions a purchase option for the modem, as well as setup fees, and they can be a real pain to negotiate with for short periods of time, e.g.: charging for two months if you just want to use it for the last week of July and the first week of August; Bell’s service was excessively expensive and they only listed their “pricing with 2 year contract” — no idea how much it would cost to only use for a month).

I took the opportunity today to head up to the Toyota Hybrid Tour at the Bass Pro Shops mall off the 400 (just north of Hwy7). Man, nobody would have found that place that wasn’t already looking for it. It was way around the north-east corner of the mall. I had exited onto Bass Pro Mills Drive like my map told me to, and there were no signs or anything to indicate where it might be (but I did see roadside signs for a mattress and piano sales). In fact, it would have been closer to get off at Rutherford. The size of that shopping district (it’s not really one continuous mall) was pretty amazing though, I had never been up there before.

The preview of the event I had seen (can’t remember where now) had pavilions with videos describing the hybrid technology, and flags, banners, and all sorts of promotion. This was much more low-key: 4 staff members in a tent, 6 cars standing by to be shown off and test-driven, and that was about it. It actually worked out pretty well like that, though. Since this is an event not linked to any particular dealer, there was absolutely no sales pressure. They didn’t care if I was interested in buying or not, they didn’t try to get my number to call me later for a follow-up sales call, they didn’t try to sell the car at all. They just wanted to show me how the technology worked, where all the secret compartments were, and give me a few minutes to press all the buttons and see what it was like. If you’re at all interested in the Prius or Camry Hybrid (I didn’t see a HiHy, but they might have had one out on a test drive) then by all means go up and take a look: they’ll be there until 5 tomorrow and Sunday (July 14 + 15). After that, I think that’s the end of the run for Ontario.

After seeing the Civic Hybrid, I was fairly pleased, but there was a significant question surrounding the trunk space. The Prius, it was clear, had a bigger trunk than the Civic, but how big it was exactly was tough to say. Looking around the internet, there are pictures of the insane amount of things people have stuffed in there, particularly of large things that the hatchback and folding seats allow one to carry (water heaters, clothes dryers, fridges, lumber…). That showed off well how versatile it was, but versatility is a bit different from gross carrying capacity. I wanted to know what would fit with the seats up. Of course, there are other owner stories showing a completely stuffed hatchback for a road trip, with the cargo going right up to the roof and blocking the view out the rear window. Those weren’t hugely helpful, since as a safe (read: paranoid) driver, I’m hesitant to block my rear view with cargo, and have only done so a few times on my current car. They also didn’t help me see how big the trunk was relatively speaking since I didn’t know how big the owner’s luggage was. The Prius is rated as having 456 L (16 cu.ft) of cargo space, compared to just under 300 L for the Civic hybrid, and somewhere in the neighbourhood of 370 L for my Accord. The Prius is often Tardis-like in its ability to fold space and become larger on the inside than it looks on the outside, but that cargo capacity looked too good to be true, and I figured it must be measured up to the windows.

So, one burning question I had when going to the hybrid tour was how the actual (that is, non-visibility blocking) trunk space compared to that in my Accord. To test this I grabbed some collapsible laundry bags that Wayfare loves (we’ve got like 5 of them now) as well as a big green transport bin. My Accord trunk fit two “full” (opened/expanded) laundry bags, the green bin, my backpack, and had space to spare: some laptops or small items could have gone on top of everything, there was some room on either side for more stuff, and in the back cut-in part (perhaps I’ll have to MS-paint up a diagram of my trunk’s layout) there was just enough room for a small-ish backpack beside the rearmost laundry bag. Note that my backpack isn’t shown in the picture because I took it out to get my camera. You can see where it would fit though.

Then I went to the Prius, and was at first fairly disappointed that I only got the green bin and a laundry bag:

But of course a tiny bit of intelligent packing showed that two bags and a green bin just fit. This is low enough that it wasn’t blocking any visibility out the rear window, but just barely (due to the angles, some stuff could be put closer to the rear headrests, but not closer to the window). There was a bit of a nook to the left of the green bin, but not so much on the right side (I believe the jack or an enclosed cargo compartment is on the right).

That’s a fair bit smaller than my trunk, but workable, especially since that isn’t the sum total of the Prius’ trunk. There’s also the hidden compartment in the floor, shown here with my backpack for scale. It’s bigger than I thought, but not very deep; my backpack was too full to let the door close on it. Of course, the door can be taken out (I think) and leave a single, somewhat awkwardly-shaped cargo compartment. Combined, the total cargo space is close enough to that of my Accord that it will work for me, so that’s one fear assuaged (and when the need calls, I can fill it to the roof, block the view, and get more space than the Accord; plus for most things, the higher/shorter trunk of the Prius would be more useful, as there have been times when seats folded or not, I just couldn’t get something like a chair through the low hole for my trunk).

The test-drive consisted of a loop around the ring road that enclosed the Vaughn mall. Plenty of stop signs, accelerating to 50 km/h, and a few turns; but no highway test. It was reasonably fun to drive though (of course, my Accord is one of the best-driving/most fun cars I’ve had, just about as good as my BMW); I was afraid there wouldn’t be much of a road feel. Of course, since there was no road in that area 2 years ago, it’s all brand new asphalt that’s smooth as glass, so it’s kind of hard to judge road feel (especially at relatively low speeds). The side/rear visibility was decent, much better than I had been lead to be afraid of. However, I wasn’t happy with the forward visibility. I found the A-pillars were pretty thick, and the left one seemed to cut too far to the right for me. I was half tempted to lean over to drive with my head in the centre of the car. Of course, I got the same feeling from the Civic and the Buick Envoy I drove on PEI, so it may just be that all modern cars have blocky (safe?) A-pillars that drive me nuts from a visibility standpoint. I’d probably get used to it. (I hope). The very unique and minimal dashboard display up high near the road was a different implementation than the one in the Civic (which I really liked), but I have to say I liked this one almost as much. Just something about not having to track my eyes down as far to check my speed. Of course, the minimal display meant that everything else is run through the touch-screen, and I’m a little leery of having to use a touch-screen interface while driving, especially at night (I’d hate to have the bright screen ruin my night vision). There are steering wheel controls for most things though, so I may not be too bad off.

I went there with two specific questions nagging at me, and pretty much got them answered (though before buying I’ll probably rent one to take a longer test-drive on the highway). I was a little too focused though, and totally should have spent more time playing with the car and the buttons — it was pretty slow, and they weren’t pressuring me to get out of the car (just to park it), but I felt bad for taking their time and left. I didn’t even go to the consumption screen on the MFD to see what the fuel consumption was like under my real-life driving test! D’oh!

I didn’t drive the Camry Hybrid (I didn’t want to like it, since its trunk is just as tiny as the Civic Hybrid), but did sit in it just for a minute to have a peek. For the nearly the same price (in the demented Canadian market), you definitely get a lot more car with it. The interior was very plush with attractive plastics and steel/aluminum/metal-looking-plastic trim.

After all that excitement, I took my current car for gas and a routine tire pressure check… and one tire was down to <15 PSI. Damn.

This security light has caused us nothing but trouble. First, it was old and cycling a lot (they’re supposed to be changed every 3 years from the listed manufacturer’s lifetime rating — but they don’t burn out like incandescents, they just start cycling more, drawing more and more power, while providing less and less light), and alone was consuming about a third of our household’s electricity use. Then we had to wait months for a dry day to try to get on the roof (it was just one of those winters/springs where the roof was constantly covered in snow or rain) to change it out. When we finally borrowed a ladder (and a brave soul) to get up there, we found that the model of sodium lamp used had been discontinued. Fortunately, our landlord managed to find one for us, and we had intense orange light scaring away car thieves for about 3 days.

Now it’s dead, and I have no idea why.

The landlord took the old bulb, and I suspect she threw it out, so replacing it to see if it’s the bulb or the fixture probably isn’t going to be an option. Likewise, those high pressure sodium lamps cost over $30 (and I have no idea where she found one), so just picking up a second to test out isn’t on the table. I feel bad bugging the landlord, especially since if it’s not fixed in a week I’m going to be off in Ottawa… Ugh.

There was a big power outage last night, lasted for almost exactly an hour. I’m glad the webserver came back up — my main desktop computer was on the UPS, so I had lots of time to give it a graceful shutdown (and secretly wondered how long my old CRT would have lasted on battery power, chalking up another point for the LCD flatscreen), but the webserver was only plugged into the surge protector and went off instantly. I was afraid it would get mad at me and not automagically start Apache, but it looks like everything went off without a hitch. I didn’t even have to adjust the DNS forwarding :)

I had a dream last night that my car was stolen, again. It was exceptionally vivid and realistic. So realistic that I actually woke up believing it was true; the first thing I did when I woke up was start going through rental company listings to make sure I could get back to Toronto this weekend with my cat… then saw that my car was actually safe and sound in the parking lot. It’s a strange experience getting lost in a dreamworld like that, especially after polishing off another issue of the Sandman that week.

I really like Sunbird as an application and have been using it for over a year now. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a trouble-free year. The 0.29 version of the program made it very easy for me to accidentally overwrite my entire calendar with just the latest-entered event (technically user error, but it was definitely an enabler in that process). Then I had a bunch of problems with the server I was uploading my calendar to so I could sync up wherever I was. Not exactly Sunbird’s fault either, but the whole point of getting away from my desk calendar was so that I could check it wherever I was. For a while, it was pretty good living with the site (www.icalx.com): they provided free hosting for my calendar with no advertising, and it was running well for about a year, even including perks like letting non-Sunbird (or ical compatible) users view a HTML version of my public calendar. Pretty good considering it’s really tough to find a server that will take money to sync your calendar, let alone a free one. It’s been over two months and I still can’t use Sunbird with it. The site itself is still working — I can log in and check my account, but I can’t upload or download calendars, which makes the whole exercise rather pointless.

I’ve switched over to Google Calendar now. I remember trying it a year or more ago before I settled on Sunbird, and wasn’t happy with it. What, exactly, I found displeasing I can no longer say: it’s a pretty full-featured calendar. Just about the only option lacking is a way to classify your events. There are a few other minor shortcomings, of course: it’s slightly slower than Sunbird because it’s not local: adding entries, etc, requires getting info from the server so there’ s a bit of latency. Fortunately, Google’s servers are pretty fast. And, since it’s entirely web-based, I don’t need to install it on every computer I might want to check my calendar on, just log in and go. It might even save a spot on my taskbar since I always have an open webbrowser anyway, but don’t always have (or need to have) Sunbird open.